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Jun 1 2016

# London Grip New Poetry – Summer 2016

*

This issue of London Grip features new poems by:

*Brian Docherty *Tracey Peterson *Bruce Christianson *Caroline Am Bergris
*Jonathan Taylor *Caroline Natzler *Mary Franklin *Gareth Culshaw
* Abdulrahman M Abu-yaman *Brian Johnstone *Jane Henderson *Maggie Freeman * Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer *Oliver Comins *Teoti Jardine
*Mary Michaels *Gary Beck *Racker Donnelly *Anthony Wilson *John Freeman *Bethany W Pope *Emma Lee *Fiona Sinclair

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at LG New Poetry Summer 2016

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

Please send submissions of no more than three poems to poetry@londongrip.co.uk,
Please include poems in the message body or a single attachment and add a 2-3 line biography

We prefer to get submissions in the following windows:
December-January, March-April, June-July and September-October
i.e. avoiding the months when we are busy compiling a new issue

Editorial

Edward Curtis’s fading yet atmospheric photograph entitled ‘The Vanishing Race – Navaho’ seems to justify the cliché about pictures and thousands of words. However a Mary Franklin poem appearing in this issue does succeed in communicating something extra about the image. Oddly enough, some of the other pieces which follow are about words being misused or misunderstood and causing miscommunication. We will not pursue this mild contradiction any further, but simply let the poems speak for themselves…

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

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    Brian Docherty: More
    [From our love]
    I want neither
    the sweetness of honey
                                       nor the sting of bees (Sappho)

    at this stage in our life,
    but something else,
    something more, and
                                     to be surprised again.

    We are not children
    but not senile yet
    although that might
                                    happen, if not soon,

    then on a grey day
    that stays greyed out,
    for one or both of us
                                    and no workarounds

    to reset us or our
    lives, no way to recover
    whatever is deleted,
                                   or simply forgotten

    but until then, I want
    every good thing we
    can offer each other
                                 while we are still viable,

    nearing end of life
    status but not obsolete,
    our memory still active
                                and not overwritten.

    If love is our engine
    and our energy,
    I want more
                                of the only life we have.

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***

    Brian Docherty: The Goddess In The Garden
    I tell you;
                    in time to come
    someone will remember us   (Sappho)

    Even if this
                       garden is ruined
    and this country no longer exists

    I am here;
                     you are here
    whoever put us here is gone

    I do not
                  recall their names
    their tribe, even their language

    but their prayers
                     linger on, echo
    through my stony heart

    and I hope
                      through your heart
    and keeps you waiting too

    waiting for what?
                       not worship
    or sacrifice, we had enough of that

    but I wish
                     friend, that someone
    will always remember us

    and treat us
                      with respect
    until we live again.

Brian Docherty lives in East Sussex, and has published four books, most recently Independence Day (Penniless Press, 2015).
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***

    Tracey Peterson: Sign Five Hundred and Seventy

    She writes
    what she sees in memory,
    how she feels.

    Propped up in bed at day’s end,
    reading,
    wearing sexy glasses,
    she pauses,
    feels the cool wind
    touch her bare arms and shoulders,
    reach her face.
    Remembers
    they both liked
    a wide open window,
    the fresh cool night air
    to kiss their sleep,
    and rain.

    Tonight
    there’s no rain
    just the wind,
    wind enough to stir memory.

    She leaves the window open.

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***

    Tracey Peterson: In The Wake of Wreckage

    This house is empty.
    The bedrooms are upstairs.
    See.
    All the while knowing
    something about himself.

    And on a haiku of loneliness
    hummingbird is flying.
    He wants to keep her
    but there’s no point in trying.
    It was different.

    Even love
    is having a hard time
    with this one.

    All the while knowing
    something about yourself.
    All the while knowing something
    about yourself.

    And come to think of it
    whose life can be explained
    in ten tidy bullet points on a page?

Tracey Peterson is a New Zealand writer and lover of poetry, having read, written and performed it from a young age and in her adult years taught it to children from 5 to 16 years. A graduate of Canterbury University, she studied English, Linguistics, Education and Speech-language Therapy and recently graduated from the Hagley Writer’s Institute in Christchurch NZ with distinction.
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    Bruce Christianson: Spring Clean

    love is clearing out her bedroom
    the radio is on – the window open
    it's all going pretty well
    until she finds the letters

    love sits surrounded by confetti
    holding half a scissored wedding
    photograph that shows her
    looking young & happy

    love rights the toppled shredder
    basket – tucks the snap behind
    her mirror & heads down
    stairs to fetch the hoover

Bruce Christianson is a mathematician from New Zealand who has taught in Hertfordshire for the best part of thirty years. He quite often sees love’s red Lexus parked opposite the recycling centre.
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***

    Caroline Am Bergris : The Hug

    Away from the ash of British winterlight
    in the Valencian sun,
    she saw what she had only dully known –
    Death,
    slowly dressing her husband.

    She shrieked into the mountain peace
    louder than she had been
    in the years of his violence,
    could not stop
    despite the punishable folly of tears.

    And yet he clamped his arms around her,
    compressed her face against his ribs
    – the only hug in thirty-five years.

    They collapsed onto a bench,
    sobbing,
    then he went inside.
    Afterwards they talked of dinner,
    of peaches, plums and pomegranates,
    and it was not mentioned.

Caroline Am Bergris studied philosophy, sociology, anthropology and theology at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She became a musician, teacher, stand-up comedian and mediator. After suffering domestic abuse and an accident which left her disabled, she now writes poetry. She is being mentored by Cinnamon Press towards publishing her first full collection.
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***

    Jonathan Taylor: Cassandra

    At job interviews no-one believed her predictions
    of where she saw herself five years hence.

    At the altar her fiancé disbelieved her vows
    and soon sought comfort with another.

    She tried crystal-ball-telling on the pier
    but was exposed (wrongly) as a fraud.

    She tried signing on but the job centre
    didn’t believe she was actively seeking work.

    There is no incapacity benefit for a prophet
    who’s been cursed so she turned to tricks

    but all her Agamemnons refused to pay upfront
    because they didn’t believe her promises.

    Now she’s begging, but everyone hurries by
    terrified of the fall of Troy reflected in her eyes.

Jonathan Taylor‘s books include the novels Melissa (Salt, 2015) and Entertaining Strangers (Salt, 2012), and the poetry collection Musicolepsy (Shoestring, 2013). He is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk
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***

    Caroline Natzler: Close

    For this to be it –

    under arches emblazoned
    with painted crosses and palm fronds

    a dusty trench leading to a blank
    grey earth end

    a droop of disappointment

    then to realize –

    as the woman with keen glasses and swirling hair
    tells of the marble plaque
    the bull god of light with his spike-rayed halo
    stumbled on nearby, now vanished,

    hinting at a cult temple buried
    beneath the church –
    cannot be excavated
    the site too fragile
    the sea roaring close, eroding

    to realize with a surge of the spirit
    what is behind the dead earth wall
    may always be secret

    to touch on
    the long celebration of mystery.

Caroline Natzler’s collections are Design Fault (Flambard Press 2001), Smart Dust (Grenadine Press 2009), and two smaller ones, Fold (Hearing Eye 2014) and Only (Grenadine Press 2015). Caroline teaches creative writing at the City Lit and runs some free-lance writing workshops.
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***

    Mary Franklin: The Vanishing Race – Navaho
    After the 1907 photograph by Edward S. Curtis

    A saucer-topped mesa visible,
    distant, as across the flat terrain
    they ride away from their lands.

    Five on horseback, one behind
    the other like smokestacks,
    a sixth on the left.  It’s hard to tell
    male or female;  no dust rises
    as they journey at dusk, heads bowed,
    their woven clothes in tatters,
    their tribal strength in shreds.

    Shadow catchers the Indians named
    frontier photographers who stole
    souls from them with their images.

Mary Franklin has had poems published in print and online in Iota, The Open Mouse, Ink Sweat and Tears, London Grip, Message in a Bottle, The Stare’s Nest, Three Drops from a Cauldron and various anthologies, including Ragged Raven and Three Drops Press. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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***

    Gareth Culshaw: Chomolungma

    In the Rongbuk glacier, a shoal of tents is stranded
    as if washed up by a forgotten sea;

    Sherpas, gap toothed, conker brown with
    calluses that stretch across their palms
    like the Himalayas themselves.
    This is their only way of living.
    A heave and a squat, grimace and sweat.
    Carrying other people's loads.

    The clanking of pots could be mistaken
    for rattling bone joints.
    But what do people care when their boots
    are sent back to the homes
    sitting like a pair of lungs on their porch?

    Their icy sweat candle-waxes the streets
    and roads. You feel the unbalanced
    steps of where their feet have been before.

Gareth Culshaw resides in N Wales. He has been published in various magazines across the UK and USA. He hopes to achieve something with the pen.
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***

    Abdulrahman M Abu-yaman : Visiting Europe In My Native Attire

    On
    Visiting Britain in my
    Babba-riga local clothing, the Mayor
    Of Liverpool inquired what type of turban
    I was putting on, to which I replied:
    "This Ronni tied to my head was crafted
    Out of the last wool from an extinct species.
    Two turbans were made out of it. One
    Is apparently wrapped on my head,
    And the other, I heard is among the
    Nominees fighting for the honour to be
    Crowned by the Emir of Kano."

    On
    Visiting Barcelona, wearing
    My Agbada native attire, Señorita
    Margarita asked what kind of fabric
    I had on, to which I responded:
    "It came from a rare hybrid cotton that
    No longer exists. Two of its souvenirs
    Still live on though. One is obviously
    Hanging on my body and the other,
    Rumour has it that its been shortlisted
    For selection, to be worn by the new
    Oba of Lagos on his coronation."

    On
    Visiting Sicily with my domestic
    Wrapper loosely tied to my waist,
    Don Fibonacci questioned what type
    Of apparel it was, to which I answered:
    "It originated from a textile, last and only
    Of its kind. Two wrappers were
    Woven out of it. One has clearly found a
    Home around my waist, and the other,
    Gossips circulate that the Lòló of
    Arochuckwu has gotten hold of it."

    Notes
    Babba-riga: a native loose and spacious garment, which is usually heavily embroided, from the northern part of Nigeria.
    Ronni: the Hausa nomenclature for turban
    Kano: a major city in northern Nigeria
    Agbada: traditional wide gown similar to the Babba-riga in fashion and prevalent in the westerners in Nigeria.
    Oba: title to the paramount ruler of Lagos city
    Lòló: could be translated to a queen in Igbo land (pronounced as "Lorlor")
    Arochuckwu: a major town in Abia, eastern Nigeria

Abdulrahman M Abu-yaman is a Nigerian poet who loves to write Ghazals (with ‘Rajab’ as his signature pen name) and other forms of poetry. He studied Economics at IBB University, Lapai, Niger State of Nigeria. A follower of British premier league (Chelsea FC), and an amateur fashion designer (for now), his poems have appeared in Kalahari Reviews, Elsielsy blog and are forthcoming in Sentinel Literary Quarterly as well as Black Boy Review.
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***

    Brian Johnstone: Foley Romance
    Foley artists match live sound effects with the action of the picture.
    The technique are named for Jack Foley, a sound editor at Universal Studios.
                 					film-sound.org

    All they have left are these two cigarettes,
    one last kiss that you plant on the back
    of your hand. It’s then that the credits roll.

    But they’ve made it this far, over gravel
    you tramped in a tray, fallen leaves
    scrunched up in your palm, to a table

    for two in a roadhouse. Voices subdued,
    they talk in the glow of a candle. It’s a strip
    of old tape you set burning that gutters,

    as cellophane crumpled and squeezed
    is all their log fire. Meal done, they’re out
    on the balcony now. You flip up a Zippo

    close to the mic, get the almost inaudible
    purr of the flame, your intake of breath
    their inhale. Crickets you keep in a box

    are there for them too. They won’t stop
    as they lay down their smokes, lids heavy,
    lean in. Lips on your hand say much more.

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***

    Brian Johnstone: Arc

    Falling from the plane
    a broken belt
    no parachute (less weight)

    the flying ace can recognise
    in engine noise
    direction

    something
    way beyond belief
    that might yet save his bacon

    the Sopwith Camel
    locked into manoeuvre
    such that he

    lands on the kite
    directly at the bottom of its loop
    grabs wildly at a strut

    equally unlikely finds a hold
    regains the cockpit
    makes a perfect landing

    and lighting up a Woodbine
    elicits from the crowd
    Some trick!

    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grahame_Donald

Brian Johnstone’s work has appeared throughout Scotland, in the UK, North America and Europe. He has published six collections, most recently Dry Stone Work (Arc, 2014) and his work appears on The Poetry Archive website.
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    Jane Henderson: Unprimed

    He likes the unprimed side of the canvas,
    where paint bites and bleeds.

    This is his arena
    under the bare light bulb,
    the war-zone floor,
    the wall a palette,
    his countenance blurred
    in the pitted glass.

    A flick through Muybridge
    finds men tussling:
    a glut of buttocks,
    Heraclean backs and calves
    he can wield to mercury
    with a lick of sable.

    Three in the morning,
    fizzing on Soho neon,
    the brutality of fact*
    high on his agenda.
    He summons the bull ring,
    the primeval earth of it,
    the ectoplasmic scream
    ejaculating from the tunnel.

    He outlines a platform
    in Lamp Black,
    a circular dais
    beneath a bayonet bulb.
    Arrows point to where
    the pair will writhe
    in raw amalgam.

    The combat begins.

    * Francis Bacon’s own phrase
    .

    Jane Henderson is a gardener and sculptor. She lives in Suffolk.

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***

    Maggie Freeman: Three objects

    This brick is clay slapped in a thin rectangle
    baked and laid among six thousand others
    to build this wall that has basked
    in the sun of five hundred summers
    grown green with damp in the downpours
    of each autumn, to freeze in frosts
    that pierced and swelled its fabric
    and crack! look, I can put my finger in.
    Look, look, it is summer again and I stand
    with the seed heads of the long grass
    brushing my bare legs and listen to the song
    of skylarks soaring above the wall, and set
    my hand on this brick and feel the sun heat
    of it, beyond eight human lifetimes old

    This stone piles up with others heaped
    against the dawn sky – Norham Castle
    its blue shadow cast by the unrisen sun
    falling toward the riverful of yellow light
    that the cows lap up, just the one of them distinct
    red and white, lapping without stopping
    these two hundred years in a calm
    that Turner swept on the canvas
    that serenity of the single moment
    he caught in oils, so that now
    standing in this gallery among strangers
    I still feel peace

    This poem is black ink printed on paper
    such as you might see scrunched up
    bowled by a high wind along a tarmac street
    on a cloud-swept day. You run after it
    stoop to catch it, smooth it flat
    with the palm of your hand; in the weak light
    decipher my words that are no longer
    what I wrote, but what your mood
    your thoughts and memories dictate.
    I toss it to you.

Maggie Freeman’s poems have been published In Stand and The Rialto. Her collection Singing for Mr Bear was published in 2014 by Littoral Press. She also writes historical novels.
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***

    Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer: the writer comes across a hedgehog at midnight
                                                       or the hedgehog comes across a writer

    little wolf in grandma’s bonnet and dress
    sways at an easy pace across pavement space,
    a two-step beat for four tiny feet –

    but then, under sudden lamplight,
    splits at a stroke, turning into

    two dancers, each looking to lead:
    the first is keen to effect a pause

    to worm for well-earned sustenance;
    the other, unsure, tightens its grip,

    quickens the trot, heading from spotlight
    to
            scuttle… snuffle…

    language falls away like
              lace, the weight of human significance
                      breaks in mud, in darkness

Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer lives in the North East of England. Her work has appeared in, amongst other things, The American Aesthetic and The Journal and can be found at rosawallingwefelmeyer.wordpress.com.
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***

    Oliver Comins: Fishing

    A woman has borrowed arms and legs.
    She walks on a tightrope in front of
    the watching crowd.  They stand back,
    as instructed, do not wish to become
    a bigger part of what is happening.

    Her mouth opens to breathe or scream.
    There isn’t time to discover which
    before the rope dissolves into a flight
    of rainforest kingfishers, swooping
    down into the traffic, its liquid ooze.

Oliver Comins lives and works in West London. Recent work in South Bank Poetry, The Emma Press Anthology of Age, IS&T, Axon and London Grip. Two pamphlets published by Templar Poetry in 2015 Yes to everything and Staying in touch
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    Teoti Jardine: At the beach on Sunday morning

    A greyed tree trunk looks inviting,
    I sit and lean against its broken branch.

    I wonder where are you?

    I hear the waves from South America
    celebrating their arrival,

    I sit and celebrate my wondering.

Teoti Jardine lives in Otuatahi New Zealand with his dog Amie who takes him walking every day.
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***

    Mary Michaels: Lifeboat Station, Early Evening

    From the gangway high above the water
    looking back towards the shore
    the long beach is empty

    but for two teenage boys
    sprawled, lobbing pebbles at a disused wooden pallet
    that they must have set on fire

    Jagged and transparent, blue and orange flames
    travel the slats and cross-struts of the frame
    like the hands of a swift, experienced masseur

    the waves, by comparison, seem sluggish, over-weighted

    One boy glances up, conscious of my gaze
    defensive, expecting a shout or some objection

    but there isn’t any danger, nobody’s been harmed
    there’s no-one else around

    Simply a nailed-together wooden structure burned
    and a patch of shingle blackened.

Mary Michaels has lived most of her life in London. Her work has appeared in a wide range of magazines and her collection The Shape of the Rock was selected for the ‘Alternative Next Generation’ list. Her most recent poetry pamphlet is Caret Mark, (Hearing Eye). A prose collection, Squint, appeared in 2011 from The Other Press following her earlier My Life in Films. She is also widely known for her reviews and articles on contemporary poets.
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***

    Gary Beck: Historical Enactment

    A mourning dove
    sits on my terrace
    crying piteously
    for me to feed him.
    But every time
    I put out seed
    the pigeons land,
    chase him away,
    no matter how much
    I put out.
    If I sit out
    he flies away,
    preferring to go hungry
    than risk becoming a house dove.

Gary Beck spent most of his life as a theatre director. He has 11 published chapbooks, 9 published poetry collections, 4 more accepted for publication. He has 3 novels and 1 accepted for publication. 2 short story collections and 1 accepted for publication. He lives in NYC.
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***

    Racker Donnelly: Poor Brecht
    After Vom Armen BB  by Bertholt Brecht  [1927]

    I, Bertolt Brecht, came out of the dark.
    Brought to this city, in mother’s womb I lay.
    The coldness of those woods has left a mark
    that will be on me to my dying day.

    Here in the city I was ever keen
    to savour every stupefying drug:
    newspapers, booze, narcotics, nicotine.
    Indolent and cynical and smug.

    Sociable I sniff about society,
    relish the stench of creatures in a zoo,
    doff my hat: escutcheon of propriety,
    coolly admit I tang a little too.

    Mornings in a pair of rocking chairs,
    I place two women, smile at them and quip,
    Ladies, place your trust in polar bears
    sooner than with yours truly take a trip.

    Evenings when my good old cronies call,
    they roll in grunting HELLO, SQUIRE and then
    plonk their feet on my table top and drawl,
    THINGS ARE BOUND TO LOOK UP.  I don’t ask when.

    In the small grey hours when pine trees piss
    and birds, their hangers-on, bewail and cheep,
    I stub my fag and drain my glass and, after this,
    tossing and turning, snatch a few hours’ sleep.

    Our houses jolt. Our skin is soft as satin.
    A ragtime band, our every pleasure’s frantic.
    We erect coffin boxes in Manhattan,
    and antennas to appease the wild Atlantic.

    Nothing will last (said Brecht) but the cutting wind.
    Consumption makes consumptive: the biter, bit.
    The party’s over.  After us (he grinned),
    nothing that matters to us will matter a shit.

    In earthquakes and the coming devastation,
    I hope to keep my cigarette a-glow.
    I, inmate of a tarmac conurbation,
    brought from cold woods in my mother long ago.

    Racker Donnelly writes: I've always been interested in Brecht's plays and character. I wrote this "travestation"
    of Vom Armen BB years ago and revised it recently for performance. It's called a travestation because that's my
    term for my "pruned and pellucid" versions of works by Chaucer, Burns, Joyce and from the Irish that I perform
    on the folk circuit.  Although this one's pretty accurate, it isn't a scholarly translation; I just wanted the ballad
    to feel at home in English.

An Irish poet and playwright, Racker Donnelly often features at folk and literary festivals. A UK Slam Champion Poet and author of a sequel to James Joyce’s Ulysses, his website is www.rackerdonnelly.com and he has posted over a thousand of his Rackerhymes on Facebook.
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***

    Anthony Wilson: Slow Weather

    Each of us differently afraid
    of what the other might not say,

    there is no telling, this January afternoon,
    what will become of us pulling

    at products our eyes taste
    before we do. The day, illuminated

    and indifferent, is like any other, a little sad,
    perhaps, the drizzle with something of Madrid

    in it, or Milan, but unique as our nostrils,
    and open as they to the uneasy

    and unseen air we push through,
    the procession of our dutiful trolleys somehow

    grand and illustrious, filled with exciting cheeses.
    Looking for reasons to part before greeting,

    alert as collies at dipping time,
    there is nothing which cannot be subsumed

    into courtly anecdote or gossip
    about those we avoid in public,

    that very sense of the public governing
    this exchange of nods nobody

    sees but us. Wishing
    each other well via news of unnamed colleagues,

    we are released back to ourselves,
    all choice open before us

    from donuts to joint-pain remedies
    our decisions invisible as charity.

Anthony Wilson is editor of Lifesaving Poems (Bloodaxe, 2015), based on his blog of the same name. His other books include Riddance (Worple Press, 2012) and a memoir of cancer, Love for Now (Impress Books, 2012). He blogs at www.anthonywilsonpoetry.com
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***

     John Freeman: The Mug In The Common Room

    When I need tea I go to the common room
    and there’s a couple who are often in there.
    He’s always pleased to see me and he talks,
    and I talk back, ask him polite questions
    and, when prompted, reminisce.  He’s amazed
    at the famous speaker I invited here –
    it comes up because we’ve discussed his books.
    I try to draw her into conversation
    and get one-word answers.  She might be appalled
    to think she gives this impression, but the more
    I talk with her friend and the happier
    he seems, the more disapproving she looks.

    It may be just my imagination.

    Or the picture she’s getting of who I am
    from my stories of old times and my jokes.

    My appearance.

    		   Dammit, my very essence
    must be obnoxious to her, the more so
    the more I make a prat of myself. But how
    can I stop when the young man is pleased
    to have an older ally in this place?

    If they both had the same attitude
    I’d know what to do. I would clear out fast,
    or put more coins in the honesty box
    and press the buttons for another tea.

    As it is I drink the one I’ve bought, there,
    instead of taking it back to my office,
    and remember uneasily afterwards
    that I left the cardboard mug, not quite empty,
    for someone else to tut and clear away.

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***

    John Freeman: Friend of Truth

    He hasn’t been on speaking terms with the truth
    for years, she’d say, pleased with her wit, and that
    was as good a fair-weather sign as a fir cone.
    Not that we used cones, nor seaweed. He would peer
    at the hooded wall-thermometer in the yard
    where sun never disturbed its accuracy,
    call out the highs and lows the mercury
    had pushed the thin black markers to, and pull them
    back to the tops of the two silver columns
    with the heavy horse-shoe magnet, red and grey,
    its ends made concave to fit round the thin
    glass of the tubes. Beside him bottled milk
    would be pushing creamy ice cylinders
    up through burst tinfoil caps, or trying not to
    separate into blue and white by skulking
    in water in a yellow plastic bucket.

    He was on counting terms with truth all right,
    seventy degrees Fahrenheit in the shade,
    down to fifty-nine in the night, or sixty.
    She scorned his promise to hoover the books
    when he retired, and the implication she saw
    in his sharing spoons to save washing up.
    He must have said that once, and she preserved it,
    adding, as if he ever did the washing up.
    She was furious when he remembered
    their courtship differently from her true text:
    liar! You’re not recording this, are you?

    He made excursions into dead-pan humour,
    pretending to read news from the paper
    that started off believable: an increase
    in accidents to trains passing our house
    when the bedroom curtains were taken down.
    That was the sort of offering that would call
    her remark down from its case in the corner
    like a fiddle or a concertina.
    She’d play it as if she’d just invented it,
    and we’d perform Being A Family

John Freeman’s collections include White Wings: New and Selected Prose Poems (Contraband Books), A Suite for Summer (Worple), and The Light Is Of Love, I Think: New and Selected Poems (Stride). He taught for many years at Cardiff University.
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***

    Bethany W Pope: The Language of Flowers

    My mother lied, saying yellow roses
    were her favourite flower because jonquils were
    out of season when she married in June
    and she didn't want my father to know
    that not everything about their wedding
    was perfect. My father was in love with
    the idea of perfection. He hated
    everything that did not fit. A June-baby,
    out-of-season, inappropriately
    sexed, I could never be perfect. I loved
    roots more than blossoms, and soil more than scent.
    When I was twelve, I woke in the orphanage.
    In early spring the garden-plots bled white-
    and-orange daffodils, so flawlessly
    formed that it hurt me to look at them. I
    couldn't ever look away. Crouching down
    between fleshy green stalks and the icy
    stone wall of Suliman Cottage, I breathed
    the scent of stem-sap, cedar, cow manure,
    remembering the feel of my mother’s hands,
    how she’d stroke my hair when she was in pain
    and we’d lie there together in the breath-
    moist dark. I found out today that jonquils
    and daffodils are both members of the
    Narcissus family; emblems of dangerous
    self-absorption. My father cares nothing
    for either of them. My mother convinced
    herself that yellow roses are what she
    wanted all along. The bright bell-mouths of
    daffodils peal echoes through the folded flesh
    of my brain. I see them and remember
    that cold stone wall, and the terror behind it.
    I feel my nails scraping a nest of white roots.

Bethany W Pope is an award-winning author. She has published several collections of poetry: A Radiance (Cultured Llama, 2012) Crown of Thorns (Oneiros Books, 2013), The Gospel of Flies (Writing Knights Press 2014), and Undisturbed Circles (Lapwing, 2014). Her collection The Rag and Boneyard, was published this month by Indigo Dreams and her chapbook Among The White Roots will be released by Three Drops Press next autumn. Her first novel, Masque, shall be published by Seren in 2016.
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***

    Emma Lee: Technician meets Soul

    He coils over the upright piano,
    flat fingers hitting the right notes
    at the right speed: technically perfect.

    His girlfriend is rosebud lipstick,
    glossy victory curls,
    a perfect 1950s hourglass.

    He practises first, last and any time between,
    sounding a note and checking pitch
    before singing, technically exact.

    The spotlight loves her. She has perfect
    pitch. Sings anything: classical, country,
    pop, as if from a breaking heart and aching soul.

    He’s teetotal, refuses to smoke,
    avoids spicy foods. Can tell you
    how long he’s practiced to the minute.

    She’s all smiles, loves a drink, late nights,
    an occasional smoke, grabs food on the go.
    Admits she sometimes tires of singing solo
    and he’s a perfect backing vocalist.

Emma Lee‘s most recent collection is Ghosts in the Desert (Indigo Dreams, 2015). She was co-editor of Over Land Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves, 2015). She reviews for London Grip, Sabotage Reviews, The Journal and The High Window Journal and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com
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***

    Fiona Sinclair: Staying Alive

    Occasional exploration in wardrobe
    for casual jacket or formal two piece
    disturbs the once white now ghost-grey suit
    like a memory at the back of the mind.

    He caught disco fever in his 30s:
    dance classes to learn the moves,
    Burtons to buy the Travolta suit,
    Saturday nights hitting Canterbury’s own Studio 54,
    bumping, pointing, strutting into early hours.

    Easing into his 60s in chinos and crew neck,
    he takes night classes in local history
    but still a glitter-ball glint in his eye
    when Freudian hand-slips dial from radio 4 to 2.
    and as Bee Gees sound sashays out,
    his toes twitch inside Clarks’ slip-ons .

Fiona Sinclair’s first full collection Ladies who Lunch was published in 2015 by Lapwing Press, Belfast. She is the editor of the on-line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle.
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